Hard hats, soft language: Ann Farmer passed along an article from Whittier College's newspaper about the restrictions on workers renovating a library there. "Since the work is taking place on a campus known for its Quaker roots," the newspaper said, the building contract forbade raucous behavior, including cursing. The workers "followed these rules," one school official told the newspaper.

The car waited for Kevin Brown, its motor idling. Inside, the heater blasted warm, seductive air. The car was there to take him to a home with real walls and real doors, to a room of his own, to a new life--or a chance to reclaim his old one. For the last year, Brown had lived under a highway, in a box fashioned of cardboard and plywood. This was the day he'd been waiting for--moving day.

Rejecting arguments that Jerry Lee Alonzo Jr. was too drunk to know what he was doing, an emotional Superior Court jury on Thursday convicted him of murder in the shooting of a movie theater security guard in Orange last year. Alonzo, a 20-year-old unemployed construction worker, may face life in prison without the possibility of parole when he is sentenced on June 30 by Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O'Leary. The victim, Dagoberto R.

You might wonder why Dennis Biro, 45, a burly construction worker, goes by the name Teddy Bear. "Actually, I'm just that kind of a person. Cuddly, understanding, the kind of person you'd like to sit down and talk to," said the heavy-equipment operator who moves dirt on construction sites for a living. But to tell the truth, the San Clemente resident would rather hold that conversation in his new $40,000 hot-air balloon that has teddy bears painted all over its blue cover.

A construction worker was injured at Torrance Municipal Airport on Tuesday when a boom lifting a concrete wall snapped and narrowly missed pinning the man under the huge cement slab. More than half a dozen other workers at the site fled after hearing a loud noise while one of the walls for a new flight-test facility being built for Robinson Helicopter Co., the nation's largest supplier of commercial helicopters, was being lifted by the crane.

Police on Thursday identified one of the two men shot to death this week as Harry Vaughan, 47, a construction worker from Fountain Valley who was remembered by friends as animated and outgoing. Vaughan and another man were found dead Tuesday in a warehouse in the 7500 block of Slater Avenue, an industrial area. The bodies were discovered by Vaughan's girlfriend, Shelley Coleman, who went to the warehouse to meet Vaughan on Tuesday morning.

A construction worker has been acquitted of charges he set fire to a 127-unit condominium project in Lancaster last June, one of the costliest fires in Antelope Valley history. After deliberating for two days, a Lancaster Superior Court jury Wednesday found Gabriel G. Cevallos, 26, of Lancaster not guilty of two counts of arson in connection with the $3-million fire. Cevallos was the foreman for a framing crew that was working on the unoccupied Marbella Villas townhouses before the June 16 fire.

A Lancaster woman was sentenced Friday to 27 years to life in prison for murdering a construction worker who she claimed gave drugs to her teen-age daughter. Lancaster Superior Court Judge Margaret Grignon gave Belita Fox the mandatory sentence of 25 years to life for murder, adding two years because Fox used a gun to kill Kevin Furman, 26. The sentence means that Fox, 41, will serve about 18 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole, her lawyer said.

Featuring a knockout performance by Adam Scott, a much-deserved 2009 Independent Spirit Award nominee for best male lead, "The Vicious Kind" upends the heavily tread dysfunctional family drama in ways that are unique, surprising and memorable. The film, also up for best screenplay at the Spirits, should prove a solid launching pad for writer-director Lee Toland Krieger. Set in small-town Connecticut over a Thanksgiving weekend, this sharp-tongued, emotionally resonant tale sets angry -- and, yes, kind of vicious -- construction worker Caleb Sinclaire (Scott)

A man working in a trench at an Echo Park home was killed Thursday afternoon when it caved in, burying him up to his chin, authorities said. Alfredo Luna, 28, a construction worker, was pronounced dead at the scene by Los Angeles firefighters. Luna was unconscious when firefighters arrived, but the damp soil was so heavy that firefighters were unable to immediately free him, said Brian Humphry, a Fire Department spokesman. Luna died a few minutes later.